


A Mexican and a Jew Walk Into a KKK Rally

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Generation Kill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-15
Updated: 2008-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:19:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1636103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And this is why I get prostitutes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mexican and a Jew Walk Into a KKK Rally

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Antheia, Serial Karma and Sparky77 for beta duty.
> 
> Written for amchara

 

 

Poke Espera answers the door of his Echo Park home in an LA Dodgers tee shirt and boxer shorts. His wife must not be home; Gina would never let him be seen by other people like this. 

"Wassup, dog?" he says, taking the proffered case of Heineken from Brad's hand. 

"Noth--" 

Brad's greeting is cut off by high-pitched shrieking that can only be created by large groups of women or a child under the age of ten. 

"Brad! Brad!" is followed by the rapid patter of little feet. In the flash of an artillery round, Brad's got a five-year old girl wrapped around his right pants leg. 

He blinks down at little Lily Espera, who's all wide dark eyes and haphazard ponytails. He doesn't like kids. They're not quite as bad as adults -- they're too young to lie all the time -- but they're still deeply suspect.

Lily gives him an enormous smile. She's missing two front teeth. 

Brad _really_ doesn't like kids. "I'm being invaded by Mexicans," he says placidly. 

"It's about time we got our land back," Poke laughs. "Best start packing or get Hooked on Phonics, Mexican style."

"Why is your progeny attacking me?" Brad asks, shaking his leg vigorously despite the thirty-odd pounds of weight holding it down. 

" _Progeny_?" Poke snorts. "For real, dog?"

Lily just giggles and holds on that much tighter. "What did you bring me?" she demands.

Brad looks down and dramatically arches an eyebrow. "Why would I bring you something? Is it your birthday?"

Lily blinks. "No."

"Is it Hanukah?"

Lily's face creases in confusion. "What's -- what's that?"

"It's a celebration of the warrior spirit of my people, before our holy book was turned into a right-wing crux for stupidity and inbreeding by a bunch of wrinkled polygamists in Redneck-land."

Lily blinks again.

Brad glances up at Poke. "Don't you have a responsibility to teach your child about _all_ the oppressive religions and not just the one where the guy was put up on a wooden cross for being a peace-loving, hippie-ass charlatan and now people eat ass-flavored chocolate eggs to celebrate?"

Poke just snorts. "Language."

Brad looks around. "Aren't you missing one? Have you sold her to the white man yet?"

"Claudia's got dance classes today. And art. And gymnastics."

Brad stares.

"As long as she's in class, she's not messin' around with some greasy cholo like her daddy used to be."

Brad has to concede the point.

"Can I have my toy now?" Lily interrupts.

"Is it Christmas?" Brad asks Lily.

Lily giggles. "No. Not for --" she glances up at her father, and Poke shrugs. "Not for a long time."

"So, why would I bring you a present?" Brad asks.

Lily's lower lip juts out, and Brad shakes his head, eyeing Poke. "And this is why I get prostitutes," he mocks.

"Hey, dog, that's my kid you're talking about," Poke warns, even as Brad removes a yellow computer game from his back pocket and offers it to Lily.

The ensuing shriek of glee makes his ears throb. 

Of course, when Lily grabs for the toy, she lets go of his leg and promptly falls on the floor. The excitement of getting a gift clearly overrides any pain she might be feeling. 

"What do you say to Brad?" Poke prompts.

"Thank you, Uncle Brad!" Lily says, leaning over and squeezing Brad's calf while sprawled out on the floor.

Poke smirks when Brad gives him a look of disbelief. "All that for $29.99 and four AA batteries?"

"You know you want one," Poke teases. "Don't even lie."

Brad snorts. "A hooker is more economical in the long run, Poke."

  


* * *

  


Outside of Pendleton, Brad doesn't associate with the rest of the platoon. 

Except for Nate. 

And Poke.

He doesn't know when this started, just that he's met Poke's friends -- all white -- and Poke's met his sisters -- all Jewish -- and everybody just seems to get along. Maybe it's the military that makes it easier for them to cross cultural and economic and educational lines. Or maybe it's just that they get each other.

There's no greater equalizer than being stuck out in the desert with nothing to protect you apart from the men around you, some broken-down, shitty pieces of tin on four wheels, and guns that need more lubrication than a seventeen year-old boy from Orange County having sex with his best friend for the first time.

Once you leave the desert though, the imbalance returns, so there has to be something else.

Brad's not prosaic: whatever `it' is, he has it with Poke. Maybe that mysterious `it' is just their ability to stand in the kitchen drinking beer, waiting on the pizza delivery guy, bitching like old married people and not piss all over each other in displays of their alpha nature.

"A Wii? Why the fuck would I get that pussy-licking, weak-ass Japanese piece of shit? You want a real game station, buy an Atari."

"An _Atari_? Bitch, this ain't 1980!"

"A Wii is a box with a dick wand attached. And it doesn't even vibrate, which means the cocksuckers at Nintendo can't even the basics right. If I want to stick something up my ass, I can pay somebody to do that -- _and_ I don't have to clean up the mess afterwards. "

"It's a game console, motherfucker, nobody's saying you have to marry that shit before the Grand Dragon at the next KKK rally - but for the record, it does vibrate."

Brad pauses with his beer up to his mouth, his mouth twitching. So many choices so little time. "Can you imagine if we walked into a KKK rally?"

They share a look.

"A Mexican and a Jew walk into a KKK rally," Poke cracks, "and then we burn that motherfucker _down_."

They clink bottles together. 

"And while we're on the subject of the white man and the way y'all treat people of color--"

Brad rolls his eyes dramatically. Poke's like a wind-up toy: turn the handle and watch the race talk go.

"Please explain to me how y'all motherfuckers don't like minorities, but then you pay hundreds of dollars for some fucking mystic spray tans to get darker, come off looking like some diseased orange motherfuckers, and then want to talk about how dark _we_ are? Blacks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Asian motherfuckers don't need to be sitting under no fucking lamps, we're beautiful naturally. It's y'all pasty ass bitches that need to think on that. Talk about self-hatred."

Brad makes an obvious show of popping the top on another beer and double-fisting the drinks. Poke ignores him. It's yet another reason they manage to get along as well as they do.

"You know there are a lot of Jewish people who don't consider themselves 'white' in the European persecute-all-non-Anglos definition, right?" Brad points out rationally. "Culturally speaking--"

Poke makes a dismissive noise. "Culturally speaking, my ass. Newsflash, dog, if you ain't a person of color, you white. If you never had somebody discriminate against your ass 'cause you brown or yellow or pitch motherfucking black, you white. You can say whatever the fuck else you want to about it, but at the end of the day, ain't nobody gonna know you Jewish unless you tell'em or your last name ends with 'berg', 'stein', 'gold' or 'silver.'

Brad rolls his eyes.

Poke carries on. "Or maybe you're just jealous. You want to be assimilated that badly? We'll keep on sleeping with you and making brown babies, don't even worry about it."

Brad belches. "Did you really just say 'assimilated'?"

"Hell yeah, bitch," Poke teases. "Don't worry, I got something for your white ass," he promises, grabbing his crotch. 

Brad snorts. "You got me a dickless wonder? I'm touched."

  


* * *

  


Lily manages to get half of her pizza on her clothes and the other half in her hair. It's not cute. Not even a little bit. Not even when she covers one of her eyes with a piece of pepperoni and announces she's a pirate like Captain Hook. 

Okay, maybe Brad laughs a little at that.

  


* * *

  


Brad's watching VH1 Classic, eating his third slice of pizza and drinking his fourth beer when Poke comes back from putting Lily down for her nap. 

Brad shakes his head as Poke drops down in the chair across from him and scratches himself. "I get tired just watching her."

"You ain't lyin', dog," Poke agrees. "She's got more energy than Person on Ripped Fuel, dip _and_ a thing of dried Sanka." 

"Yeah, I've already got one of those, thanks."

Poke grins. "You know she's real happy that her Uncle Brad brought her a present. She's sleeping with it right now. Wouldn't even let me put it on the nightstand. She's probably going to drop it in the toilet by mistake, but you know, it's the thought, right?"

Brad doesn't say anything, focusing intently on a Christopher Cross video on the TV. 

So, he made the right choice. Good. It only took him an hour of bitching out four different sales clerks at Target about the lack of quality games for five year old girls who weren't fucking Disney princesses and needed to have games that reflected that they actually had brains.

It's all bullshit.

Brad has no idea why he bothers with things like educational games. If Poke's lucky, Lily won't get knocked up by some gangbanging Mexican hood before her sixteenth birthday. 

Brad almost misses what Poke's saying about work. " _Private Contracting_ , Poke? Seriously? Why not just go back to fucking repo?"

"'Cause contracting pays better than Uncle Syphilitic Sam _and_ repo combined."

This is probably true. You don't join the military to get rich. 

"I got mouths to feed and another kid to put through private school," Poke explains. "You really think I'm about to put my baby girl in an L.A. public school? Dog, have you _seen_ an L.A. public school lately? They got fences around them, more metal detectors than LAX, more cops than the fucking president, and they don't even let the kids take the books home."

Brad blinks. "What do you mean they don't let the kids take the books home? How the hell are they supposed to do their homework?"

"They think they're gonna take the books home and burn'em. Or use the pages to roll joints. I dunno. They don't even have lockers, since apparently they're all packin' or whatever. It's a fucking sad state of affairs, Brad. 

"Why d'you think I send Claudia and Lily to the whitest fucking preps school my ass can afford? I want that shit so white that they're the only non-Aryan looking kids there. Where'd you go to school?" Poke prods.

Brad shakes his head. "Not around here."

"Exactly," Poke says, slapping the arm of the chair as though that makes his point. 

They drink in silence for several moments. "Speaking of school," Poke says eventually, "you talked to the LT lately?"

Brad glances back at the TV. "Couple days ago."

"F'real? That's good. How's it going up in White Bread Land?"

"He's good." 

"You gonna go see him at some point?" Poke prods.

"Why?" Brad asks dryly, "Were you going to smuggle some illegal contraband to him?"

Poke smirks. "Ain't that just like the white man, always wanting the Mexican to do his dirty work for him. You got some gardens you need me to tend to? Some oranges you want me to sell at a busy intersection, risking my life for a dollar? You got some drug shipments you need me to get over the border?"

Brad chuckles and takes a sip of his beer. "I think I've filled my oppression quota for the day, but I'll get back to you if something comes up."

Poke just snorts. "So, speaking of oppression, what's up with you and the LT, dog?

Brad raises an eyebrow.

Poke sighs. "C'mon, this is me. You think I don't know what's goin' down?"

Brad's mouth thins into a line. Poke rolls his eyes. "I'm not saying something happened - or that something _is_ happening -- I'm just saying, y'all were real tight before he left. I've seen dogs humping in the street that were less all up in it than you two."

"You think we're dogs fucking in the street?" Brad's tone says it all.

"No, I thinking y'all _need_ to be fucking like dogs in the street. There's a difference."

Brad sets his beer on the coffee table. "I don't know what conversation you think we're having, Tony, but we're not having it."

"Ain't no conversation, I'm just sayin': you need to go get yours 'cause you've been acting like Gina on the rag since the LT went off to get his degree in Fucking the Working Man and Making Policy to Get the White Man Rich."

Brad scowls. 

Poke gestures at him. "That face you makin' right now? That is the face of a man who ain't gettin' any. That is the face of a fuckin' warrior with no battle left-- that's all I'm sayin'. And I know how you two roll: one of you acts all bitchy, the other one acts all hurt and everybody else gets shot at."

"I never got anybody shot at," Brad protests sharply.

"Officers fightin', grunts sufferin', all over some bullshit about which hole you put your dick in. It ain't right." 

Brad rolls his eyes. "The Gay Mafia must love you, Poke."

  


* * *

  


Brad's sitting on the floor putting together a hopelessly inane puzzle with Lily when Gina Espera walks through the door in a perfectly tailored business suit. Gina's degree in engineering probably makes her the primary breadwinner, but again, nobody ever joined the military to get rich. All the same, it makes sense that Poke decided to go ultra-alpha and join the Marines in order not to feel like somebody else's bitch.

Poke's in the kitchen cleaning up the battle between the ice cream, the chocolate sauce, little people with no self-control and bigger people with even less self-control.

Lily gives her mother a huge toothy smile. "Mama, Uncle Brad brought me a game and it's got lights and it goes beep! Beep! Beep!"

Gina laughs as she sets down her purse and keys. "Spoiling her again, Brad?"

"I'm just investing in the education of the people who are going to be responsible for making sure the planet doesn't implode before I retire to Palm Springs. Not that I'm ever going to be able to retire now that the socialists are in the White House, but it's the thought that counts."

Gina shakes her head. "Have you eaten, mija? Are you hungry? Brad, did you want to stay for dinner?"

Lily grins broadly. "We had ice cream!"

Her mother raises an eyebrow. "Oh, you did? Tony!"

Brad gets to his feet; he knows exactly where this is going. "Actually, I need to get on the road. Classes tomorrow, grunts to terrorize," he says as Poke breezes in.

"Hey, baby, how was your day?"

Gina purses her lips. "You gave Lily ice cream for dinner, Antonio?"

 _Antonio_. Damn. This is why Brad isn't married.

When Poke glares at him, Brad holds up his hands. This isn't his war. "I need to be getting back to the base," he says, breaking up the tension.

Poke and Gina turn on him as one. "No, you don't, you can stay for dinner, can't you?" "You sure, dog, you know we've got room." "You have to see Claudia before you go." "You can crash here and leave early, Brad. It's late, be reasonable."

Except Brad doesn't have to be reasonable; he doesn't have to compromise with anyone, ever. "No, I'm sure." Brad can deal with the Esperas. 

"Uncle Brad, are you leaving? I don't want you to leave!" 

Well, Brad can deal with _most_ of the Esperas. Lily's mouth wobbles precariously, and Brad takes a step back. He hates this part. 

Every time he visits Poke they have some version of this scene, and every time he promises himself it will be the last time, that he won't come back. It never works. This is why he's single. 

Well, it's yet another reason.

Gina deflects the oncoming tears smoothly. "Lily, did you thank Brad for his gift?"

Lily flings herself at Brad's legs for the second time today. "Thank you, Uncle Brad!" Brad pats her on the back awkwardly, scowling at the amused look shared by Poke and Gina.

Poke detaches Lily from Brad's leg and swings her up on his hip. "Brad's going to come back and visit us real soon, isn't he?"

Lily sniffs; Brad sighs. "Yeah."

"Just as soon as he gets back from visiting his friend in Boston."

"You blackmailing, mother--"

"Brad!" Gina scolds.

Brad sighs. "Yeah, yeah, fine."

Poke hands Lily off to her mother and walks Brad to the door. "So, you gonna go see the LT or what?"

"I just said I was," Brad snaps.

"You think I don't know somebody trying to get the fuck out of something when I see it? Don't tell me the Iceman's _afraid_ , dog."

Brad blinks. "Fuck you, Poke."

Poke grins. "Gotta get permission from your man first."

"I would kill you where you stand, but then your wife would be pissed and you'd probably come back just to bitch about how the white man was wiping out your race again."

"Hey, I ain't say y'all had to get married or nothin', even though that is legal now in Massachusetts, innit?"

Brad just glares.

Poke smiles. "Don't be a stranger. Mi casa and all that."

Brad's still glaring when Poke closes the door.

Eventually, he turns to leave and stops. 

He doesn't _have_ to get back to the base tonight. He's not actually teaching again for another three days. Maybe he should take a trip over to LAX and see when the next flight to Boston Logan leaves. 

Maybe he should show up in Cambridge and drag Nate out of those boring-ass, boot-licking classes that won't teach him anything he doesn't already know. Brad could remind him that real warriors don't need to be defined by pieces of paper and lots of zeroes in the bank.

 _Maybe_.

Besides, somebody's going to have to get his six when they go to that KKK rally.

  


-end- 

 


End file.
